TRANSCRIPT
PART 2
In Part 2 of this episode of Grassroots Nation, Rohini Nilekani continues her conversation with Rukmini Banerji and Madhav Chavan, CEO and Founder of Pratham.
Set up in 1995, Pratham’s mission is to see every child in school and learning well. It is a deeply influential organization whose mandate far exceeded its size because of the philosophies and thinking that have infused its DNA. Since it’s inception, it has contributed widely to this mission in india, from its early beginnings running balwadis in Mumbai, to being present in over 23 states and union territories working with various state governments in large scale initiatives, producing the vital ASER report that annually records the state of education in rural india, and the Read India campaign.
In this episode Rohini, Madhav and Rukmini talk about what it took to set Pratham up, its many champions starting with the Municipal Commissioner of Mumbai, how the balwadis were set up, and the operational phenomenon it became as it worked in 3000 communities across the city.
This conversation was recorded at the Bangalore International Centre in Bangalore.
ROHINI
The first early years and then Rukmini comes in pretty soon.
MADHAV
So so there are some fundamental things about Pratham. As we remarked trust is 1 in the DNA scale is tested, in your head it is scale of Mumbai. But the first time the scale and your all these dreams about scale they are tested. So Mr Karle called me to the to his office.
A few weeks after the Resolution to create the organization was passed. And he said, Madhav, “This is a budget time and I want to know if we are going to do this. We are told that 2 and half lakh children are out of school. But if all these children have to come to school, then do you have enough schools? Do we have good schools? Do we have clean schools?” So the whole thing was about do we have enough?
So I am saying, So what? So he said, no, you tell me. I said how do I tell you? You said you have to go and visit all the schools and- I said 1200 schools? Mr Karle, I have only 10 people working with me and not even seriously, I mean how do I do this? He said that’s not my problem. You went and told in the meeting that you can create a societal mission and all that. Now create it. This is actually true. And I didn’t know what to do then. And he wanted it before budget time. Budget year, as you know, is in February. I said sir budget time to hoga nahi but okay he said, do what you can.
Question is, how do you survey 485 buildings in which 1200 schools are housed? Could do it but, it has to be credible, etcetera, etcetera. And there was a young lady called Shilpa Sakharkar. She was a student of Faridas from Nirmala Niketan. Again, let me tell you, people do all the thinking. It’s not like you are as a central person of it. And Shilpa said Sir, I have a friend who is a doctor. Why don’t we ask doctors to volunteer to survey the schools?
Here this is completely out of the left field, right? What? But I thought that was a- and she argued that there are homeopathic doctors and there are Junani doctors and all kinds of doctors and they take afternoons off, go home to sleep. So why can’t you ask them to spare their afternoon? This was her idea, Shilpa’s idea.
And I said let’s try it. So we asked for an appointment with the Indian Medical Association at Mahalakshmi and they were incredulous… What? You think we are sanitation inspectors or what? I said no. But if you, the doctors, say the schools are clean, everybody will believe because you have no, you know, vested interest in it. But if you say that the schools are not clean, then the administration will be forced to accept that your judgment must be good. And they said yes, and a letter went out from IMA saying that please volunteer.
I remember many of my classmates were physicians, also surgeons and so on. So they started calling and they said okay, we will participate. So we got some 350 doctors volunteering to go to to these buildings in the afternoon and we got the survey results on my one laptop that I had brought. Usme data entry Kiya. And in 3 months time we submitted the data. We said 75% schools of Mumbai are good.
Which was shocking. How can how can you say that? Actually, my doctor friends called up on the phone and said you know what, thank you for giving us opportunity to go to schools because we had never seen a municipal school, although we live there. And somebody said, but you know you have you been to the urinals there? They stink. They said okay, tell me this is some doctors actually saying – show us a urinal in India that doesn’t stink. So what are we comparing this with and why are we doing that?
And all these thinking was happening at the grassroots and this is also educational for me. Because people are positive, people are not always negative about things. They have a very good view of how things should be and what otherwise you will go by what press reports say. Anyway. So this was the first time that we are. The circumstances are no money. No people and don’t know what to do. And yet you go about and take a challenge and say do it.
ROHINI
You found abundance in scarcity.
MADHAV
Aha. Okay. Yeah. What’s abundant is that scarcity. And so you have to use that scarcity. So the question was then what? So we were told go teacher ke training karo. I had no clue about education and teacher training kaun karega? So since Farida was The social worker she had she knew many NGOs, many institutions and and so we said what to do? Teacher training karo. Okay. Teacher training, municipal corporation, said okay chalo teacher training karo. And the training started and I was visiting the training programs and I was wandering between sessions at tea time, people are telling us, You know children come to our schools without being potty trained also. They dont know how to sit, how to listen. And you are asking us to give quality education. Whose idea is this? So why don’t you do something concrete, constructive? Give children pre school education.
In one shot, the told give us a good idea about education and second thing said get out of our way and let us do our work and don’t get into it. So there again. That was an idea that came from the school teachers. You have to listen. Very often we do not listen. We come up with our own idea, then say yeh karo woh karo, but there is a lot that the teachers have to say, but you have to listen properly and then then you are okay.
So once we decided that okay pre school education has to be done, how? Again, the same thing. There was a model that the Municipal Corporation already had. They were what are known as CDOs. Community Development Officers, some 21 of them. And they were running this model in the municipal schools. They they used to make a school room available for the community. Balwadi for yeah, for balwadi. The balwadi model actually came from there.
So they used to find somebody Who was trained or something. And they said okay, you can run a balewadi class in the school. As long as you. And you can charge ₹5, that was also a part of it, you can charge ₹5. Keep the money for you. We are we are not employing you. And you start teaching the children and the condition is that after the children finish their one year of pre school they have to go to the municipal school. There was a bad thing, bad thing matlab, You can’t tell people ki idhar hi aana chahiye.
I said why don’t you take this to scale? You have the schools, you have the buildings, but they were not willing to do. And that is when I said OK, we will take it to scale. The same idea, we cannot do it in the municipal schools, but can we do it in the slum communities? All the elements of what that model were was were used.
So we we found the young ladies in the slums and said you find the children you want to teach and you can charge them any fees that the parents are willing to pay and keep the fees as your own. We will give you some ₹100 a month. There was a need and it was on fire. I mean, everybody just wanted to do it.
ROHINI
Also, it was a very simple model.
MADHAV
Again, I want to stress that it was a model that existed before. We just simply took it and ran with it.
ROHINI
And it’s good to call out, you know, there’s a truism that only in the market or civil society can innovate, but we have already seen 2 or 3 examples where good people inside their state system are innovating and in fact, they probably innovating around the country all the time. We don’t call necessarily call that innovation, but you pick that up, innovation up and then you put it out into the community.
MADHAV
Yeah, absolutely. So that’s how the Balwadi program started. And with that Balwadi program, we could prove this was a proof of concept that an NGO can actually work on a very large scale because within a matter of 2 to 3 years, we were at three thousand, three and half thousand balwadis. And not only that, we were our numbers and actually we could show children. There was some 55-56,000 children in the balwadis. And then the government schools, the municipal schools, started saying, yeh kuch me, dam hai kuchh. So then there were more willing to work with us.
ROHINI
Does this predate the Anganwadis?
MADHAV
Anganwadi programme already existed. Not in Mumbai so much, but around the country, in the rural areas. And then Anganwadi was universalised 91-92.
RUKMINI
See the urban Anganwadis are much more recent. And Bombay has the problem that if you’re an unauthorised settlement then how much government services can come. So that may have been another issue for why you knowin those days that was that was then discarded
ROHINI
Then later of course the free and compulsory, all those restrictions were lifted for government work but yeah so there was other pre school activity already happening around the country. So the anganwadi system through other NGOs.
MADHAV
ICDS was already there. This this was Interior child development scheme and then that was called anganwadi. We were urban-
ROHINI
And it was it volunteer, more or less volunteer driven model inside the community.
MADHAV
Yes
ROHINI
One of you describe a typical balwadi of those days.
RUKMINI
So a space usually. And of course we paid, nobody paid any rent for the space. So the spaces could be the room in which the balwadi teacher used to live. But to have that space, you have to get all your family members out. So you need cooperation even at that level. Lots of varandas. We discovered at that time that political parties all have offices in the slums, but no political parties actually active in the morning. You know that activity picks up towards the afternoon and evening, so often political party offices could be used.
There was a police station somewhere in Kurla which said aap jagah dhundh rahe hamara yahan kar sakte ho. Again, obviously not a great place to run Balewadi in the police station, but there was space people who are willing. So any and every space. And there were constraints. If a 3 year old child had to walk, it had to be very close to their house. So what is the kind of space that you could find there? So a very large number actually were in people’s homes, but there as well you needed, as I said, the collaboration of everybody else in the house to get out for 2 hours so that you could have that space. And so a little space, local balwadi teacher who tended to be a young woman usually. And..
ROHINI
Was that like 90-95% women?
MADHAV
Almost 100% women.
And they were also, for example, I remember a case where this was in Chembur where there was a, what is the technical English name, I don’t know, Hijra who were wanted to be a Balwadi teacher, transgender. And the community was fine with it. So the issue was ki can that person become or not become? And my point was, who are we to decide anything? The space, The children? Everything is being done as long as a parents are okay with any of this it is okay with us. So lots and lots and lots of young women lots and lots of turnover. So you know we had something like you know 3000, 3500 almost when we calculated 1200 would turnover every year. And I remember the team going to Madhav saying that you know you know kitna training Karenge? Jitna training karte Hain sab log change ho jate hai and he told our balewadi team that nothing is lost because these are.
01:35:49
The reason there is a turnover is unki shadi ho rahi hai. They are moving there, having children, whatever. So this is actually investment in young mothers. So nothing is going waste. So I don’t know what extent the team was convinced, but, you know, I think it was.
MADHAV
No, no, we have seen it later in the years that people have come back and said that help me, I’m, I’m a better mother.
ROHINI
And then there were children, 10-12 of different ages…
RUKMINI
Children at that age are small and you are thin. And so you can fit in quite a few in one place, but never more than 20, you know, I mean, the space itself was also. And also managing little children more than that would be difficult. So it was usually 18-20-15. And usually the balwadi teacher was very known to all the mothers.
ROHINI
And people paid money?
RUKMINI
Some did, some didn’t, some did quite a lot whereas sometimes there was thinking hamare bache uniform hona chahiye. So it was all settled locally that as long as you didn’t leave anybody out, whatever you are doing. I remember one story about this is an area you know when you are leaving Bombay where the garbage dump is.
So there was a we used to do lot of surveys at that time like yahaan pe jarurat hai, ye kitne balwadiyon Ki jarurat hai. And in the hunting for all of that you would also find potential instructors because people say kya kar rahi ho. Toh humein jagah chahiye, bachcha chahiye, aap logon ko balwadi chahiye ki nahi and so on. So there was one such slum called Rafiq Nagar which had I mean we were help. We were able to help set up almost 20 to 30 balwadis in one slum. There was a very crowded but absolutely everybody lived in plastic sheets. And the girl who was the Pratham person organising in this area, her name was Ghazala. Ghazala Ameen her name was. And she one day said to me ki ye balwadi hai toh ye to pre school hai to mujhe nahi accha lagta ki yeh saare bachche fate kapde mein aa rahe hain, nange aa rahe hai and all this.
She said main kuch karna main kuch karungi. Few weeks later she came back and she told me ho gaya intejam. So I said kya hua she she lived like 2 slums away. She raised a huge clothing drive and got clothes for close to 5-600 children. So that yeh fate hue kapte mujhe ache nahi lagte, so she got that. So after some time she said ki uniform hona chahiye. Abhi theek hai, kapde ho gaye, ab uniform hona chahiye. So I said toh ab tumhi rasta nikalo. She said woh mujhe pata hai mujhe hi nikalna padega. That girl managed to actually get fabric from whoever and she has okay and if in my area I am just dung se cheez chahiye. Toh maine kara… That’s it.
MADHAV
The problem of the balwadi was 3 fold. There was no space. Then in the slums they were no trained teachers and this is what all the experts were telling us. How can you start a balwadi with Hurdles? You can’t do that. There is no train teachers and there is no money which could buy any of these things. So if none of these are present, then how do you even think of scale?
So you just say that this problems don’t exist. You just wipe them off and say, OK, let’s start with what they have. This is what I talk about the Lau Tzu poem. Go to the people. Love them, learn from them.
Start with what they know, build on what they have and when it is done they will say we did it ourselves.
Now that is actually a principle that I I’d like to use, because if you trust that this is their problem, they are going to solve it, then you should say that okay you, I will help you.. We said okay, there is no space, so who’s going to have to do the space? The community will find the space. In this, Sharad Karle, the municipal commissioner, was my biggest ally. He said don’t worry about cleanliness. Nobody knows what cleanliness is. If people are living there, that’s clear enough for them, then they will find the place for their children. Don’t worry about it.
These were important lessons to be learned. Whereas the teacher in teacher training nahi hai, they are not trained teachers. This is where UNICEF came in, Vijaya Chauhan told me, It doesnt matter, We will do a short training program and what training do you need? We just need children to be comfortable with Somebody. Play, sing, dance, that’s all we want. That was the second one. And then the 3rd one was money. So money was a problem. I went to Bombay community Public Charitable Trust which was set up by Mr Parikh. Deepak Parikh, Deepak Parikh’s Uncle HD Parikh. And the gentleman was running the trust was Mr Palia, who was the former executive director of IDBI.
So I say I need need to set up as a proof of concept, 200 balwadis. So he said how long will it take? I said 3 months. He said what? That is not possible. People spend a lifetime setting up 25 balwadis and you saying you are going to set up 200 balwadis in 3 months? Not possible. I said let’s take a bet.
And he actually agreed.
So Mr Palya said, okay, if you I will give you ₹2,00,000. If you set up 100 balwadis is in the next month and a half, I will give you the remaining ₹2,00,000. I said Okay. And I came back to the office and I told everybody if you set up 200- uh 100 balwadis In next 2 months I will take you to Taj for dinner or lunch or whatever. And everybody said, OK, let’s do it. Woh toh… they did it. 100 balwadis. There’s no Taj lunch even till now.
ROHINI
So Rukmini,what are the big lessons you took away? Today we have come to Nipun Bharat, FLN is talked about all the time, foundational learning you know. But tell us, what is the biggest lessons from the whole Balwadi movement of Pratham.
RUKMINI
I think looking back I think that big things is this carpet across the community then generated a lot more other demands and the carpet also the forming of that carpet, this idea was that you know if every child and Bombay has pre school then they will go to first standard. So universalising elementary education, this was I don’t know other people did it this way but I think certainly in our heads it was, every child has a balwadi they will naturally go to first. So every child has a balewadi ko hum kaise establish karenge?
One was this, how do you influence people? How do people join you? But I think at least in my mind, there was also a little bit of a continuous how do we know what we know? And are we seeing the right thing? And you know, of the many things that need to be done, you know are we the best people to be doing what it is that we are doing? So there were 2 things that we did in 98 which were very to me, very, very interesting. One was one way to find out if every child is in a in a balwadi or not. Bombay is a very organised slum culture.
Everywhere there is some Brehwasi sangh, mahila mandal, yuvak mandal, some you know mandal is always there which is not there in many other slums in many other parts of the country. So basically in every slum in Bombay, whoever was the resident, uh, whoever was the association that represented the residence was asked ki aapke yahaan pe koi hai, kya Jo balewadi mein- balwadi hai kya and balwadi mein nahin jaa sakte hai. We are stacks and stacks of files in the office.
Letter heads of little and big organizations saying ki hamare yahaan pe nahin hai. So again take a look around in your own community apne aap se aap batao ki hai ki nahi. So that was one. The second one was that Bombay had 1200 schools and about 2000 first standard sections.
And by the first method it was like almost there was 98 children’s day. November 14th there was a big rally in which lot of our balwadi teachers came, lots of people came. It was also a time in Bombay’s municipal history when the elected people were almost decision makers. Otherwise bureaucrats used to take decisions that phase in Bombay’s history- I don’t know what it is, but there was elected people from several parties. I mean it seemed like there was a combination of bureaucrats, other people, who were there in this rally and the rally was to declare that you know almost every child has access to pre school. So one was what people said from the slums and a very systematic way ki every slum se leke ao, usko file karo and so on. And the other thing we did a little bit after that was to look at every first standard to say ki jo bachi first standard mein enroll ho raha hai woh kisi balwadi se aaya hai ki nahi. There we discovered big gaps and then the analysis of that gap is also interesting. Bombay ran schools in 8 languages and still does. So some of the gaps were that I am a Telugu speaking slum but there is no first standard in Telugu, close to me. Then there would be children who would, you know that kind of they were big language gaps and then there were recent migrant gaps because you often had just arrived in the city and you couldn’t. So this one systematic view from the sending location and one view from the receiving location, the two together put together, we realised now in a focused way where to work. So during this Balwadi stuff also I think is what was simple mechanisms which allowed you and everybody else, who is involved in this to take a look at, you know there, I remember there was a, you know, 3500 balwadis. Dhang se chal rahe hai ki nahi chal rahe hai? Chalao toh rahe ho aap log? To kaise kaise Pata chalega?
There was a young two couple of young McKinsey interns who have been given to us and they came up with some metrics which was and everybody loved those McKinsey boys in the office because you are smart young men wearing nice shirts and all that. So people get very irritated with them you know ki kya bol rahe hai yeh log? Nahi nahi, bethne doh inko. Ache log hai. But at the same time I remember I had a, I was very interested in these kind of measurement things. So I had a 50 balwadi teachers from cross Bombay and we sat down and said ki aap batao ki Balwadi Mein achi balwadi kya hoti hai?
And people came up and blah blah blah. And I said dus se jyada nahin hota, infact usse bhi kham hota hai to better hai. Came up with 10 indicators. And sweet McKinsey boys aside, six were common between what the balwadi teachers produced at what the consulting company did. But the good thing about what the balwadi teachers produced is that they owned it.
And then it was very easy to say ki yeh jo banaya yeh hum hi logon ne banaya apne apne aap ke liye and you know the words or whatever it is was simple. So again working with 3500, how to do training that made sense. How to do that assurance to yourself it’s not for anybody else that things are more or less going okay. And then how to listen to the demands that were coming. Ki chhote bachche ke liye apne kar diya but mere bachche school ja rahe Hain woh theek se nahi ho rahi hai, Jo hona chahiye wahaan. But mujhe nahi Pata theek se kya nahi ho rahi hai. To usko karo.
Bade bache Hain unko bhi school Mein dalna hai par unki taiyari kaun karega. Aap toh chhote bachcho ka kar rahe ho. So the 2 other major programs that happened in Bombay after that – one was called bridge courses. Again, it was not our idea. Shanta Sinha and MV Foundation were doing it in rural areas. You know, we saw it, we learnt it, we modified it, how can you do that for Bombay slums? And the second was in-school support which was also probably one of the first in India to provide to recognise that woh nahi ho raha hai jina acchi tarah se hona chahiye. And enabling and allowing community volunteers to actually come to the school as part of the school time.
To be able to do this. So these were all I think this how to create a carpet, how to know the carpet is more or less okay, how to keep changing how you look at it. What about other needs that communities are saying, are you going to respond, are you not going to respond. I think to a large extent we were driven by what people wanted and then we have to scramble to say to the extent I know you know what to do.
MADHAV
The main thing is when you are working on a large scale, we first we we learn to work on a large scale. Thinking of scale was not a problem, but when you get down there, you have to be. You have to pay attention to detail and how do you get everybody to pay attention to that detail.
That is the question. So yeah, yes, simple things like ₹100 to be paid to every balwadi teacher, 3000 teachers to be paid every month So if you are paying ₹100 physically. How do you get the receipt? Who is going to believe that? What what? What should the receipt be like?
So The teacher used to say I am so and so I’m running a balwadi here and I have so many children in my class and so many children attended the balwadi last year, last month or whatever. And I have received ₹100. So that was a report cum a receipt.
RUKMINI
But in this detail, coupon Mein Rohini signs today in English, tomorrow in Marathi and day after tomorrow Urdu. Rohini same Rohini hai, ki koi aur hai? Children’s names as they are going from balwadi to school.
So we have you know enrolled 30,000 children but school ke register mein inka name match nahi ho raha hai community mein iska naam Pinku hai. School Mein jaate hue uska naam Natasha ho Gaya, you know. So we then started recording nicknames bachche ka nickname so that we can tag.
MADHAV
So there there are some sometimes very simple but big lessons. So on this receipt things. Fraud. Some people may, you know, do all kinds of things. I was talking to Mr Wagul at that time.
Mr M Vagul, he was chairman of ICICI then it was not ICICI Bank yet. ICICI was Industrial Credit and Investment Corporation of India Limited. And he became chairman of Pratham. He joined the board first and then he became the chairman. So I was discussing these kinds of things with him because he they were, I mean that’s a another lesson how we started getting money even.
But Mr Vaghul, important observation was, He said, look Madhav, all these frauds and all these things, irregularities don’t happen in business, they do. So don’t let people scare you too much. These things happen when you do on a large scale what you can do is you can protect yourself, you can create mechanisms, you can train people not to do things, but don’t be afraid of those things. That was very important because otherwise you are making payments in 3000 locations, ordinary things are. So there will be something that will be lost and and you have to do something about it.
ROHINI
So Pratham set out, put out vision statement every child in school. And there is such a powerful ring to it most most people have very complicated Sort of goal setting. How did you come to it?
MADHAV
I was sitting in the office and writing something, doing some work. And then there was volunteer was working at McKinsey. She came into the office and said Madhav I’m typing out a newsletter And I need a tagline. I said I don’t have time now. She said No, no, Just think of something. And this was all in the air. Private education is the best investment a country can make, and all that was there already. So I said okay, let’s write down every child in school. Now that seemed incomplete. And I said okay every child in school and learning. That learning was not a part of our conscious decision, but the sentence seemed incomplete and and learning as a requirement was good. So she wrote it down.
And then 4 years later one Mr Rajan who was a trustee of Delhi. He was ex UNICEF. He said he had learning is not enough, “well” dalo.
ROHINI
Because now you’re starting to think about outcomes. Sirf learning se kya hoga? Aur kya raha hai? Kya Learning hai? Yeah. So then it became every child in school and learning Well
MADHAV
Yeah.
ROHINI
So lets move to you know, many civil society organizations grapple with expansion and a lot of it is to do with the development of people in their organization. How did you become what? What will you tell us about leadership lessons? Not about not just about becoming leaders yourselves, but about creating so many other leaders in the organization?
MADHAV
So the former Secretary of Education late Kumud Bansal. So she used to say Madhav has a trick – He goes out and he gets all these young ladies to work. And then he makes them responsible and lets them handle all the different programs. real feature is that you know you tell a person go ahead and start and you… What is the loss? The way I did it, I can say that you know, you make a person responsible, say will you do it? They’ll say yes, I will do it. Our Balvinder Singh, the account head accounts now, was exactly that when he was doing accounts at 1 point Bala left. I think somebody, the more responsible person left and where to hire a new person.
I asked Balvinder, can you handle it? He said Yeah, I can handle it, I said go ahead and do it. If you mess up, we’ll see what to do. So I think making people responsible and helping them to do their work. Is the best thing to be done.
ROHINI
So lessons of leadership, both how you develop as a leader and how you make other people into such fine leaders.
RUKMINI
You know, it’s sort of like, a learning journey. You actually don’t know where you are headed. You can just see the next thing. And you are not alone in this. There is a whole bunch of people. And my early time in Bombay, I think was very critical. There was a girl called Pratima, Pratima Mandekar who was from, you know, people who had worked with Madhav earlier.
She I mean she had a very sort of thin loud voice and I remember her saying to me at least 5 times a month tumhe kuthe hota tumhala kais Baithith hi nayi – that where the hell were you don’t know anything So this whole business about how do you learn who helps you to learn who is pushing you who is challenging you.
So the team building. Again I don’t think we have had a team building workshop but I think being thrown in the deep end builds good teams. I see this even till today I think out of that being thrown in the depend some people you know normally they do something but then here comes a big new thing to do, different people rise. So if the landscape is big, you can actually grow. Many, many people grow. I shouldn’t say you grow people. Many people grow themselves. There are some people who like to work in small is beautiful. Then how what is that place that they remain in? And there are people who want to go and conquer the whole world. So how do you let them you know free to do that.
ROHINI
So this Fundraising machine of yours what all elements does it have? Because Most people would love to be where Pratham is In terms of learning how to do fund raising, Which is one of the most difficult things for social sector organisations. How do you do it so well?
RUKMINI
I think there are very few people in Pratham who are not doing some form of resource mobilization. That’s probably a better word than fund raising, the actual fund raising arm – the Pratham USA which is also gone through lot of leadership changes in evolution.
ROHINI
So Pratham has 14 chapters in the USA locally run by communities is there.
MADHAV
Model is slightly different, but yes, there is a local leadership and locally they organise fund raisers, they raise money, some help coming from the central organization and so on and so forth.
RUKMINI
But there is, I would say that there it is again this local infection, you know you are my friend, you may not have a great regard for education or India or whatever, but you have great regard for your friend. So just like our Balwadi teachers often joined this campaign not because they had a great desire to do desh seva or whatever. But Agar meri friend kar sakti hai, main bhi kar sakta Hoon mere friend ko maza aa raha hai to mujhe bhi aayega, you know, and you form a part of a team. And there as well there is always a I think a tension that we have as well is how much should be centrally decided and how much should be locally decided. There is no magic bullet you have to balance, you know, how much should be volunteer led, how much should be staff led.
As soon as you feel that there is too many people in the staff raising funds, everybody feels it’s their job to do it. Whenever its a shared responsibility.
MUSIC
HOST
In the next segment, the conversation between Rohini Nilekani, Machav Chavan and Rukmini Banerji continues as they talk about ASER, the Annual Status of Education Report and the deep impact it has made on the landscape of education in India. The ASER report is a nationwide household survey that captures the status of children’s enrollment and learning outcomes in rural India … and it has changed the landscape of how we understand the impact of our education policies and programmes.
And finally they share their thoughts on the future of education in India.
ROHINI
What is it about the Pratham narrative, the story that attracts funders?
MADHAV
So I think the one that has succeeded in our case is a fund raising, the retail fund raising in the US. And there, I believe the biggest strength is that there are owners in each chapter Who pass on the trust. They basically say I believe in this organization so give so the the guy who gives us $1000, $500 is not thinking of everything your educational learning outcomes or your efficiency not every time but its a its a family its its gets together and contributes to you know help Pratham and they do it year after year after year.
ROHINI
Okay do you think if you had more resources, say if you doubled your budget, you could do more?
RUKMINI
See, I will tell you where we really lack direct funding is these partnerships that you do today with governments, tomorrow it may be with large scale campaigns and so on. I would like to think that where we have contributed a lot which is this very large thing- You know UP wo change karne ke liye hamne you know challenge liya. That is very difficult to find funding for. It comes from people who believe in Pratham and say ki tum decide karo. You think changing UP is very important to le lo karlo and at some level I am not questioning tum usko kaise kar rahe ho because its too big a thing. So these ASER has never received from that kind of funding because it’s sort of concrete thing that I changed these lives.
And yet something like ASER, has played a major role in the landscape you know of whatever education is in India. Large scale government partnerships, big community campaigns. These are where I think we’ve built the know how from all the other things we do and then you unleash it in some campaign form
ROHINI
So ASER is the Annual
RUKMINI
Annual Status of Education report. Acronym is ASER
ARCHIVAL AUDIO
The Annual Status of Education Report is the largest annual survey of rural children done by the citizens of India every year since 2005.
RUKMINI
But it’s also the acronym is very important. I mean its the acronym that which was created first and then the English came later to say it must have an impact.
ROHINI
How does ASER start?
RUKMINI
So, it starts with arriving in Bombay and you know being told (Marathi) – you don’t know anything. And also with my own perception that I need to understand this context. Now to me because I was very familiar with North India, it seemed to me like Bombay schools were all in good buildings, quite, you know, well trained teachers and so on. So I took upon this. I said I have to learn my own curriculum.
So we took some 20 schools in Andheri West, which if you look at all of Bombay, actually not one of the worst places of Bombay. And that also because there was a couple of by then senior people of Pratham who were in that area who could help because, you know, I needed some help with Marathi. We did a very simple assessment of children and all it was actually for my own learning rather than one for some any big program or anything like that. And what came out was the fact that the school looked good, the teachers look good, the children look good, but they couldn’t do simple math.
ARCHIVAL AUDIO
From start to finish, ASER takes about 100 days. Every year, ASER asks children whether they are enrolled in shool. ASER also asks children read a simple text and do some very basic arithmetic tasks.
RUKMINI
And that was quite a shock and I remember putting it on one sheet and going to our Y V Chavan office. I was fresh, recent PhD for 6 years. This one sheet of paper within I think 10 days, The Municipal Corporation had launched a program called Shatak Jhep Jump 200 based on this. And I remember at night thinking, jeez, you know, I hope I added up the numbers correctly and so on. So, I think this exploring schooling and learning together every child in school and learning, learning well, learning, whatever, thinking about it together, Thinking about what can be done to solve it, all of these things happen together. So there was this early assessment in in Bombay combined with Shatak Jhep so how do you come up with a solution. There was listening to parents were saying bachche school toh jaa rahe hain par woh nahi ho raha hai theek se jo hona chahiye. Coming to the first randomised control trial that happened with Abhijeet and Esther in 99-2000 where that was also an attempt to look at schools are full of children but what is going on inside. Village report cards which we then decided that you know-no actually one more point would be that around 2001-2 we were very frustrated with the with the pace of progress on learning that we were able to do.
And it seemed like we were incrementally doing various things, but it wasn’t, you know, it wasn’t, it wasn’t enough, it wasn’t sufficient.
So at some point in that 2001-2 we stopped. Took a complete stop and about I dont remember now 2-300 people said let’s start again and let’s start with a group of 20-25 kids. All 8 or older, some in school, some out of school, wherever they may be. And let’s see what we can do in a month. Now month by month, because month is just a unit and you know if you are not going to do whatever you are doing, so do it for a month.
And we have to then come to a common vocabulary of what is that we were going to do. And So what you know today is ASER Tool was actually away to communicate to each other ki this is the path we want to go down, if you want to describe when children can’t read what is it is like they can’t read letters, they can’t read words, they can’t read a sentence. So that whole exercise was really our own understanding of how shall we talk in a common language about children and their progress and how can it be very simple because there are many different kinds of people in this. So it has to be kept very simple.
And it was not designed necessarily as an assessment tool, but as we began to iterate it and use it, we saw it was very beneficial to us to track children’s progress over and. over But it had a lot of another benefits- parents said kar kya rahe ho, we could say yahaan se yahaan tak leke ja rahe hai.
You know, children themselves were aware that this is our progression. So this development of this tool and the solution that we evolved along with it, then we could see that it could work at a local level, it could be used by us. But if this is such a powerful thing, then hum apne liye kyon rakhe? Then on the one hand we started figuring out how can we work on this with governments, with other NGOs and so on. This whole process you understand the problem and solve it using, At that point we called it learning to read, later on we called it read India, then it was called Kamaal, teaching at the right level, all of this is how do you accelerate the reading and the arithmetic? And on the other hand, it was clear to us that if you understand the problem, Then you start worrying about the solution. So if you don’t have a question, the answer doesn’t help. So I think around 2002-3-4 these two things came out of that original- what shall we do? How should we understand the problem and how shall we think of a solution that went that way and then various things but like leaning to 2005.
MADHAV
So we were doing it in urban areas, but for some, I dont remember how, but we were in 120 rural districts of India at that time. And we 2004 when the government changed and UPA government took charge, two things with the- Doctor Manmohan Singh declared that his government was going to measure its performance based on outcomes and not outlays. And I thought that was a very good idea. Luckily, I got inducted into the National Advisory Council as well and we started. I started telling the government at that time it why can’t you use- we have this tool to measure children’s learning. And let’s see if you can measure outcomes. Because learning is an important, important part of education. So can we improve education? Can we improve learning outcomes?
At that time the government said that you know if you try to take us with you, we will just create a burden on you. Rather than that you do it And we will watch what you do, and we will support you. And this is particularly Montak Singh Ahluwalia. He said if you try to take the government and do these things wont work. So we got the Planning Commission on board and all that and we said okay we will show you a test case, 120 districts We did a test case and we gave gave a report to the to the Planning Commission.
Planning Commission said this is very good So what about the rest of the country? And we said okay we will do. I came back to the officer, remember in the Delhi office and I asked everybody we are in 120 districts, 600 is required.
So why not? Let’s do it. So it was just a decision taken and within 3 months, we completed the whole mobilization, survey, report, everything. And I remember asking Montek Singh Ahluwalia, “We are going to release this report, I want your date. When will you come and release?”
And he said he can’t believe this. You have not even started anything. I said you give me a date. So you were there at the first release. So, and it it actually worked out like that, exactly like the first time we did the survey in Mumbai. And so we decided, okay, the whole team has to go out and do these things. The volunteer mobilization was not even planned. People were sent to different parts of the country. They went to different, different, different states. And they just grabbed hold of whoever was willing to go and do the survey and we got it.
So that was the first time. Then it became much better organised. Yeah, of course, and and the simplicity of the tool. And reliance on voluntary energy, that is what worked for it.
ROHINI
You know, we all who have been in the education, its its. We must do deep reflection that after so much effort, Samaaj has and so many other Pratham is just one instance big instance of how much civil action has happened in the Samaaj for education, early and middle school. Similarly Bazaar also has got very interesting. Sarkaar has been doing and still we have stage not just in India but globally. What? What is fundamental? What are we missing that all children are not being able to learn.
RUKMINI
No, so I think that one is the way the system delivers. But what is the objective of the system? I believe the objective of the system is not every child learning well, it is some children learning well. We have at least in India, our whole system is designed to enable certain people to. Some small chunk to succeed, we do this bifurcation very early, by 3rd standard, 70% children are already cleared, they are not going to make it. The system does not invest in those.
ROHINI
We are teaching some kinds of things in our school, like every child, should know the same thing. And when you leave the school and come back home, it’s still fairly agrarian the country. You need to know something completely different. Is that part of it?
MADHAV
Yes. I think that is the part of it because the question is we are testing through ASER, let’s related it to ASER or now even Nipun Bharat and everything. We are measuring progress based on a dipstick survey of your ability to read.
The question is What should children learn? Let’s ask That. And during the pandemic, the schools were closed for 2 years. Basically then, 3rd graders now in 22-23 should know nothing if everything happens in school. But that’s not the case. The difference is only 7%. So is there something else happening? And we are testing what we know how to test.
ROHINI
Is it something to do with the mismatch between what the system says we should know, our children should know, and what children really need to know in a you know, era of very complex rapid change, then Maybe just learning how to learn is enough. And we dont know how to really teach children to learn how to learn in very different context and circumstances.
RUKMINI
I also think that there is, you know, this universalising elementary education. Every child in school has come with many more things other than just children in school, and one of them is incredibly high aspirations for what will happen once all children are in school. And a lot of that is coming from parents who haven’t had much education themselves. But have seen that when people finished 8th, 10th unka to duniya badal jaata and therefore that is what I want for my children and education cannot let me down because that’s the only path that I have seen that works. So this high aspirations. I would say that today everybody, there is nobody in India who wants their children to have less than 15 years of education.
Talk to 14, 15, 16, 18 year olds. And despite whatever experiences they may have had as young children-. I mean, I am stunned as to how many people say exam Mein baithenge qualify karenge and fir aage badhenge. If you say aage badhenge, you know in the army in India you can only recruit 40,000 people a year. Lakhs of people are applying, but I’ll be the successful one, right? So this, this, this, this very high aspiration, use of resources which are very scarce to feed that aspiration which is not going to get to its ultimate. I think we are this is building
ROHINI
So what is the future of Pratham?
RUKMINI
So I think we have to look at what we are doing today or can do tomorrow in the context of what is very India is also right. So one is that I believe that this new education policy, it is up to people like us and many others to not let it remain a policy because at least the early goals are very doable. So at some level, I think in the early childhood and in this basic, you know, reading, writing, we know what to do. We have to get it done. It will take time. Within the government, you have to still push. But I think rest of the country is ready for these pushes and everything that we are doing in the community, I see a lot of potential. For example, young mothers Today, mothers of children who are 3 to 8 are not like mothers of 15 years ago. They are beneficiaries of having been through this universalization process. They have high aspiration. They also have some skills which are not being tapped into sufficiently. We also have very low female labour force participation for a whole variety of the reasons these young women, who are also youth are trapped in their local circumstance, so unleashing that potential could be one big force that helps Nipun Bharat actually happen.
ARCHIVAL AUDIO
Nipun Bharat advertisement
RUKMINI
So if you assume that Nipun Bharat can happen, which means that for this generation of 3 to 8, if you solve this basic problem, they will engage with good, bad, ugly education system in a totally different way. If you are a grade level in India, you can go quite far. Jobs etcetera still need to be tackled. I think in a in a mental, in intellectual way, in a mental way, in a conceptual way, some of the things that Madhav is saying and much bigger, we have to totally rethink what happens after basics.
And not only what you learn, which is important, but how you learn. Because that world outside is not an individual world. Our education system is individual excellence and academic oriented. But what the world needs is actually learning how to work in groups, how learning how to solve things locally.
I think we were ahead of our time with ASER. We were ahead of our time with teaching at the right level. And I think on that growth front, we have to come up with convincing models for ourselves whether other people take it or not. What can kids have gone through Whatever it is we think they should go through, what do they do next is something that we really have to work on. So one is help everybody else implement the lower stuff, which we know what to do. It needs to get done and then very, very actively engaged with this 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, what is going to happen to that.
MADHAV
So Pratham has to move beyond basics while staying with the basics.
ROHINI
Pratham ko doosra teesra.
RUKMINI
And what Pratham did will be taken over by the mothers in the next 20 years.
ROHINI
After Pratham, Dwitiya and Tritiya, OK, we very much look forward to the evolution of Pratham. We thank you Madhav and Rukmini for sharing all your insights and thank you for being part of this podcast.
Thank you to everybody for listening so much.
Thank you very much.
HOST
Grassroots Nation is a podcast from Rohini Nilekani Philanthropies. For more information go to rohini nilekani philanthropies dot org or join the conversation on social media at RNP underscore foundation.
Stay tuned for our next episode. Thank you for listening to Grassroots Nation.
